For one-and-a-half years now, we’ve been following the play-by-play of the "six strikes" plan set to hit the majority of American Internet users sometime this year.

The Copyright Alert System (CAS), as it's formally known, is now set to come online this year. It's been orchestrated by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and major American ISPs, which are collected under an umbrella organization called the Center for Copyright Information (CCI).

Once in place, the CAS monitors Internet usage looking for traffic of unauthorized downloads. Then, users will be "educated" about legal alternatives. These individuals will have to acknowledge those warnings, and over time, they may have their Internet access throttled or may have legal charges brought.

But a new report and leaked document published last week by TorrentFreak suggests Verizon’s six strikes plan will also affect its business customers, beyond its regular residential customers. According to the Verizon document, once an accused infringer reaches the fifth and sixth warning stage, the Internet connection would be reduced to 256kbps for two to three days.

If true, that could potentially put a huge burden on small businesses—particularly cafés with open Wi-Fi hotspots. Any business with more than a few employees, therefore, could be unduly, collectively punished via their ISP simply because of the accused actions of one person. That’s far different from a small, contained home network, where there is only a small number of users at any given time—and likely, the one paying the bill knows all of them.

Ed McFadden, a Verizon spokesperson, said the document was authentic, but he cautioned it was a "working draft document" that was subject to change.

"Things are still being discussed and worked out," he told Ars. "Beyond that we're going to be informing our customers about the program within the next month."

The CCI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Notification and acknowledgement

Based on Verizon’s document, customers would receive first and second notification warnings "delivered by e-mail and automatic voicemail." These would inform the customer "how to check to see if file sharing software is operating on your computer (and how to remove it) and tell you where to find information on obtaining content legally."

The third and fourth warnings would "redirect your browser to a special webpage where you can review and acknowledge receiving the alerts," then "provide a short video about copyright law and the consequences of copyright infringement." Furthermore, the user would be required to click an "acknowledgement" button. But the fifth and sixth warnings would lead to a speed slowdown.

However, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario—a Wi-Fi café, for instance—where someone using an open network has been downloading unauthorized copies of Game of Thrones, and the café owner (or another customer, for that matter) is faced with these warnings and the acknowledgement splash page. Why should the café (and its customers) be penalized with a bandwidth slowdown, rather than the alleged infringer herself?

When this scenario was outlined to Verizon’s spokesperson, Ed McFadden, he said he wasn’t sure how the company would respond.

(Update January 15, 4:00pm CT: McFadden re-iterated to Ars by e-mail that running a Wi-Fi hotspot on its own was a violation of Verizon's terms of service to begin with. "Thus your discussion about Internet cafes and open hot spots is misleading and inaccurate to the reader on a factual basis," he wrote. "We request that you correct the record.")

Ars has also asked for clarification from Verizon, outlining a similar scenario as described above, as it would pertain to a closed, small business network (rather than an open, public Wi-Fi café), and is waiting to hear back.

"Who would get that captive portal?"

Internet advocates said such a plan to enforce this against businesses seemed unreasonable, particularly given that under current American law, network owners and operators are not liable for infringing material that passes through their pipes.

"If it applies to something like a café with Wi-Fi, there's really no way for the café to monitor and police what the users are doing," Mitch Stoltz, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars. "It strikes me as not that credible."

Beyond that, he said, the practicalities of acknowledging a warning seem difficult to understand when applied to a business that may have a constantly rotating group of users.

"Who would get that captive portal?" he asked. "Would it be fulfilled once one person acknowledged it?"

Worse still, other activists pointed out this entire scheme seems to be really about expanding income for ISPs.

"This does create a scenario that discourages open Wi-Fi, which I think is a problem—I'm sure everyone has a story about how they had their day saved by some stranger being neighborly enough to allow public access to their wireless signal," Sherwin Siy, the vice president of legal affairs at Public Knowledge, told Ars.

"Of course, this is one area where the rightsholders and the ISPs' interests intersect very nicely. Verizon and its competitors want to encourage the number of paid subscribers, and the RIAA and MPAA want to have Internet connections be as identifiable as possible."

Given CAS’ constant delays, we’re still waiting to see how this plays out once it finally hits the public Internet—theoretically sometime soon.

Cyrus Farivar
Cyrus is the Senior Business Editor at Ars Technica, and is also a radio producer and author. His latest book, Habeas Data, about the legal cases over the last 50 years that have had an outsized impact on surveillance and privacy law in America, is due out in May 2018 from Melville House. Emailcyrus.farivar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@cfarivar

If we had timely, legal alternatives to obtain content at reasonable rates, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. This is going to end up being completely toothless, or people are going to flip their lids when they starting getting throttled. I say if we get throttled, the monthly fee paid to the ISP needs to be prorated. They stopped delivering the level of service agreed upon all at the behest of third party that has yet to prove anything concretely.

Regardless of what's said publicly, the really large business customers will not be monitored. In most large companies, outbound connections are sent (via NAT/PAT or a firewall) through a very small number of public addresses, lumping many internal users into one apparent IP address. Imagine the fracas that would ensue if one of the addresses being blocked or throttled belonged to a hospital or other highly visible business. T'ain't gonna happen, I'll bet.

If we had timely, legal alternatives to obtain content at reasonable rates, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. This is going to end up being completely toothless, or people are going to flip their lids when they starting getting throttled. I say if we get throttled, the monthly fee paid to the ISP needs to be prorated. They stopped delivering the level of service agreed upon all at the behest of third party that has yet to prove anything concretely.

Problem is that consumer broadband plans almost universally have a ridiculously low or no minimum guaranteed service level. That's part of the reason why everything is always UP TO xxx. They probably don't even guarantee that it will be working all the time either so they probably aren't even required to compensate you for a complete outage.

If we had timely, legal alternatives to obtain content at reasonable rates, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. This is going to end up being completely toothless, or people are going to flip their lids when they starting getting throttled. I say if we get throttled, the monthly fee paid to the ISP needs to be prorated. They stopped delivering the level of service agreed upon all at the behest of third party that has yet to prove anything concretely.

I'm all for that but, unfortunately, for it to work, you must be able to take your business to a competitor. Sadly, that's just not possible in many (most?) areas of the country.

I'll be proactive and route all my customers through a VPN. It'll save me a lot of trouble in the mean time until these policies change. I have trouble remembering all my customer's faces and names let alone who's doing what with the connection.

My suspicion is that it will almost certainly never get implemented. If it does get implemented, then most likely it will not last long.

The way around the problems are simple. If a person gets a warning lay low for three months. If a person gets a warning after laying low, then check to see whether it counts as warning one or warning two. If warnings don't expire then simply stop for a while. Oh and since the person no longer uses as much bandwidth, well lets save moneyu by going with the slowest plan. After a while the ISPs will realize that a large chunk of their customers are going with the slowest plans and they will put aside six strikes.

No I don't advocate piracy, but I realize that practically it is impossible to regulate and as common as jaywalking.

I'll be proactive and route all my customers through a VPN. It'll save me a lot of trouble in the mean time until these policies change. I have trouble remembering all my customer's faces and names let alone who's doing what with the connection.

You could still be accused of copyright violation and you'd have little recourse.

I say if we get throttled, the monthly fee paid to the ISP needs to be prorated. They stopped delivering the level of service agreed upon all at the behest of third party that has yet to prove anything concretely.

Couldn't agree more. However, *every* ISP has a clause that says my contract with them "is subject to change at any time without any notice for any reason."

Residentail connections and business connections are READILY tracked and are even maintained by 2 completely different divisions. There's a reason i pay $29 for 8mbit down at home and my company has a fallback DSL with AT&T , EXACT same speeds, that's $109/month. Busines pays more because business is expected to use 100% of their conenction at least during all major business hours. If we're using 100% of the connection 100% of the time, what we're downloading has ZERO impact on their network vs an abusive home user.

Also, since the whole idea of 6 strikes is to assist notifying users in leiu of more subpeonas lobbed at them for user ID, yes it's not possibly to subpeona a business about unidentified customers, throttling businesses based on that data is pointless.

Finally, we CONTRACT specific speeds and specific SLAs. If Verizon throttled us, they'd be instantly burdened by their OWN SLA and have to forgive our entire moneths billed fees, and potentially more if it's a recurring issue.

Also, business connections are 99% of the time static. The 3rd parts doesn;t need to sue the ISP to know what business was having piracy on their network, they can just look that info up, it's published... The subpeona idea is required because they need to confirm the users identity behind NAT and DHCP, which is irrelevent against most businesses, so they won't even BE subpeonad unless they;re a small business running on DHCP for some reason.

Now, when an ISP received a copyright notice from a 3rd party about traffc on an IP, and the ID belongs to a business, they can ALSO cite federal appelate rulings and the DMCA itself, the provider of access is held immune by the EXACT SAME LAWS that protect the ISP itself from the content owners. This entire system of 6 stikes is voluntary, not mandated in law. The coffee shop is under NO legal obligation to track, log, report, or inhibit in any way the legal and/or illegal activity of it;s users unless it BECOMES aware, sao there is zero threat from 3rd parties against businesses, and zero incentive or requirement for ISPs to either block nor hand over data about those businesses, and strong SLA contracts making them entirely unwilling to do any of the above.

NO, 6 strikes will not impact a business, period.

Also, because I used to HAVE a business connection at home, guess what, once you have a business line, and pay for it, you have all the rights (and SLAs) as if you were a business, whether or not you operate one. Pay the upgraded fees for business connections (which have no data caps even when most residental conenctions do), and open a WiFi hotspot for a guest network and state your home periodically entertains customers/clinets, and you'll be immune to 6 stikes at home. For me this is unreasonable as AT&T chearges a $90 premium in my area, but in my last city, TWC charged only a $25 premium for the same connection (and threw in several static IPs), and if I was a pirate, I;d do that in a heartbeat just to avoid the data caps, let alone the liability...

The problem with notifying users to legal alternatives is that there aren't any good legal alternatives.

You can wait several months to gain access to a low-quality version, you can buy it for an outrageously overpriced amount,or you can wait several months to rent it.

Myself, I generally just rent or wait until I see it in the $5 pile. Few movies are worth more than that, and even fewer are worth watching again (so no loss from renting).

Much like certain other hot-button topics, they're approaching this backward: they're trying slather a bunch of hard-to-implement and problematic patches over the surface rather than fixing the underlying issue.

this whole thing is a ridiculous band-aid by the RIAA and MPAA in attempts to salvage what they can from a dying business model. it used to be that music and movie production required a huge distribution and advertising network due to physical media constraints. now if I make a song or a movie, I can market directly to my end consumer and they can pay me directly what they think it is worth. the point of art isn't to make piles of cash from each copy of the media sold (copies are now useless anyhow), the point is that if the end user enjoyed the art to the point that they feel that the artist(s) should have compensation for it based upon their own personal enjoyment, then they should have a method of compensating the artist(s) directly.

there are several artists who have been pretty successful with the "pay me how much you think it's worth" model. radiohead, beefy, and a few other artists have already been pretty successful at this.

the other side of the coin of course is availability of content in convenient, fast formats for a reasonable price. when they release a film to theaters, the content is out there - most popular films end up on file sharing networks in near blu-ray quality within a few days of release... meanwhile to get it legitimately I have to wait in some cases up to 6 months!? we're living in the future, where data transfer is reasonably instantaneous, why am I waiting 6 months for a movie when the data is already there. Why can't I legally view any content that netflix currently has, or has had in the past (starz anyone?) if i still have a current subscription to their service? - I should be able to go grab blu-ray rips off bit torrent of video that i have access to low quality versions of via streaming services like netflix because i'm paying for my license to them. for that matter, why should i not be able to store copies of said material in common unencrypted file formats for offline viewing if i'm paying said licensing costs? If i go out to my local Walmart and find a blu-ray of a movie I like, buy it, bring it home, and put it on my shelf, why am i not entitled to go to my girlfriend's house and download a rip of that same blu-ray on my laptop when i've left my copy at home?

I want to pay for a licence of content what I think is reasonable. I want to be able to acquire electronic versions of this content from whatever source i choose, whenever I choose. I don't demand that there be a central repository for media (while that'd be nice, it wouldn't be fair), but rather, artists should be embracing P2P networking, not vilifying it. success for any art is not about how much money it rakes in, but how sociologically important it is, how much people enjoy it, and the true test of this is how many people have consumed this content. As an artist I would be much happier if 500,000 people paid $0-10 for a movie that I make and watched it than if 100,000 people paid $25 for it.

What we need is not a silly 6 strikes law, but a faster, better internet with enhanced P2P distribution of audio and video, and software content, and a huge copyright system reform.

I believe all artists have the right to get paid for their hard work. create a system where they can do that while making better, more accessible content whereby people can choose what to pay.

if you're walking through the subway terminal and you see a quartet of artists playing instruments with a suitcase open (clearly for donations), and you enjoy it, you throw a dollar, $5, $10, $20 if you really stop, listen and really enjoy what they have to offer, you don't get your isp, phone, other media portals turned off or a case brought against you if you choose to walk away without giving them money (maybe you don't have the cash, maybe you don't particularly enjoy the kind of music they play, perhaps they support a political platform that you oppose)... why should you online?

This won't work. Once a user gets a single notification, boom they start using VPN services for everything. All this will do is teach people how to get by the watchers. It's not hard or expensive, but most won't bother till they have a reason to add a VPN service and Verizon will be that reason.

What bothers me the most about this whole 6 strikes system is the whole guilty till proven innocent angle and the fee you have to pay either way. If they screw up and for some reason it's you that are getting the notifications you have to pay a fee to even find out why you are getting the notifications. That is just a blatant money grab and I am certain a lot of people will be paying it for no reason, or because of some clerical/computer error. Having had to deal with Verizon support in the past, let me tell you I have had a more pleasant experience with a dentist drilling my teeth. Verizon FiOS is a great service, so long as you don't have to deal with support or billing. This 6 strike thing has nightmare written all over it, and the first thing you will be doing is contacting support to try and remedy the situation.

I'm on TWC on the east coast and recently noticed ALL NNTP traffic (even 443) being throttled from midnight to 4am my time for about a week. I think this was most likely a test.

I can tell TWC one thing. I have no need of your $100/month 50 megabit package if you throttle me. If you want to play that game, you'll be the one losing, I promise you. I can go read books instead of putzing around on the internet.

To the content providers: Most of you put shows up for streaming on your own websites after they air on TV anyway, so what is going to stop me from ripping it right off your own stream instead of getting it from torrent or usenet?

How about offer me a 720p download for a buck per episode, with no DRM, and I'll pay it and we'll both go merrily on our way. Again, we can fight about this, but you WILL lose. This $3 per HD episode with DRM out the ass that iTunes and Amazon have just isn't going to work in the reality I live in.

The music industry did away with DRM, I think it's about time the video industry wake up too.

This is another step in a dangerous development that has been going on for years.Ever since the content industry started focusing on piracy and copyright violations, and decided it was more lucrative to sue teenagers and seniors for allegedly downloading a handful of songs, than to produce quality content at proper prices and go with the times instead of trying to keep an obsolete business model alive, we've seen more and more perversions of the judicial system.

The content industry has taken it upon themselves to be lawmaker, police force, judge and jury all in one. The assumption of innocence is being repeatedly reversed. ISPs get roped in because otherwise they'll have their pants sued off, and not many of them have the stones to tell the content industry to go play in traffic.

My understanding is even if all the traffic is encrypted, they join the swarm as a leecher and can get the IP of the seeders and leechers. A privete torrent with all users with encryption thoughout should be undetectable if it is infringing content or not. IP's can still be traced even with private torrents (follow the IP)

My understanding is even if all the traffic is encrypted, they join the swarm as a leecher and can get the IP of the seeders and leechers. A privete torrent with all users with encryption thoughout should be undetectable if it is infringing content or not. IP's can still be traced even with private torrents (follow the IP)

Using a torrent with a VPN means what they see is the VPN IP, not yours. As long as you're careful choosing a non-logging VPN, there's really no way to see your IP unless the VPN lags out.

Really? That web site that shows you all the stuff you've torrented lists for me a single item that I never downloaded. I wouldn't expect the **AA to have a better methodology, especially because there's no consequence for them being wrong.

As the owner/operator of an online discussion forum, I've read the law (on Section 230 immunity) on safe harbor for ISPs and, if I read it correctly, the immunity only applies when the carrier DOESN'T actively monitor and censor traffic. If there is an active censorship or monitoring process in place, the immunity doesn't apply. If the carriers are going to go through with this scheme, there shouldn't be immunity for anyone involved with it.

Not fair. I almost always buy content legitimately. However, there are times when I've missed a show because my cable provider (or whoever does the scheduling) cancelled/postponed the airing of a show for some reason. Had the show not been postponed, I would have watched it for free. So now what do I do? There's absolutely no way to watch the show except to download it via BitTorrent, which I have done a few times. An exception should be made for this case, since there's no other way to get the content (at least not without knowing the show's producer(s) and getting the original digital content from them; alas, I'm neither a Hollywood star nor friends with any producers, so that option is out).

In the increasingly rare occasion that I want to find out about a entertainment product, I USE the NET.

BitTorrent's days are numbered in any case. What I find completely bizarre about File Sharing commentary on Ars is that IPv6... doesn't use PAT. Or NAT for that matter. The Average Internet User is one IP version upgrade away from a total lack of anonymity.